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Berger is an excellent journalist. He’s very knowledgeable about space topics, has good sources, and has been extremely fair to Musk in the past. When he says
by pavlov 2y ago
Berger is an excellent journalist. He’s very knowledgeable about space topics, has good sources, and has been extremely fair to Musk in the past.
When he says it’s a “throne of lies”, a line has been crossed.
- chinathrow 2y agoWhat line?
- n4r9 2y agoExploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points certainly feels like a line to me.
- nodoll 2y ago[flagged]
- pjc50 2y agoEh, the whole space race has its origins in a propaganda war with the USSR staffed by ex-Nazi engineers. It's not more deserving of sacred purity than anything else. On the other hand, the sheer lying about everything is exhaustive and corrosive to the public sphere. (also while dealing with the villain of the week we've forgotten about the previous villain responsible for this situation, Boeing)
- Y_Y 2y ago> Eh, the whole space race has its origins in a propaganda war with the USSR staffed by ex-Nazi engineers. It's not more deserving of sacred purity than anything else. I certainly agree with this, but at the same time I think it's a red herring. So much good tech comes from war, but the nice thing (imho) is that it's "path independent". I'm no more going to scorn the work of Werner von Braun than I would John von Neumann.
- voidUpdate 2y agoI also think that calling von Braun a Nazi isn't necessarily correct. He worked for the Nazi party, but if he didn't it probably wouldn't have worked out very well for him, and I don't think he supported their ideals all that much. He also always wanted to make his rockets, and working at Peenemünde gave him the opportunity to do that, even if it did require PoW labour. Obviously I'm not saying he was a saint, but I don't think he was as "evil" as some people make him out to be, and I don't think many people came out of the war with clean hands. He just really liked making rockets
- somenameforme 2y agoI'm not the downvoter here, but somehow this made me think of an old play on the title of a biographical film about him: 'I aim at the stars! But sometimes I hit London...'
- variaga 2y agoDon't say that he's hypocritical- say rather that he's apolitical. 'Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down - that's not my department' says Werner Von Braun. Some have harsh words for this man of renown. But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude, like the widows and cripples in old London town who owe their large pension to Wernher von Braun Tom Leher, "Werner Von Braun"
- Y_Y 2y agoFWIW I didn't mean to make any accusations about von Braun's character. I was taking "ex-Nazi engineer" to mean someone to had been an engineer in the Nazi regime. In fairness though, he was an NSDAP member.
- voidUpdate 2y agoSorry, I didn't mean it to come off as disagreeing with you, I think you're right, this is just a topic that's been on my mind recently and I wanted to express my own thoughts on it =) And yeah, he's not perfect, he was directly and indirectly responsible for some bad things happening, but a lot of people on the "good" side were too
- porphyra 2y agoLet's not forget that right now it seems that only SpaceX is putting in the "monumental efforts" to advance the "pioneeribg industry", being responsible for the vast majority of launches, the only safe crewed spacecraft, as well as pushing the frontier of space travel with ambitious new projects such as Starship.
- pavlov 2y agoDoes that justify blatant lies?
- tim333 2y agoI'm worried spacex will end up a bit like Tesla, largely abandoned for Musk to go off on some political weirdness.
- scryers_bloom 2y agoDoubt it. Musk only owns something like ~15% of Tesla, and owns about 50% of spacex. He knows tesla is overvalued immensely and wants to deeply integrate himself with government to make sure spacex becomes the de facto space org. for the United States (possibly).
- trompetenaccoun 2y agoWhat "blatant lies" though? The question hasn't really been answered. The user wrote: >Exploiting and lying about the monumental efforts of a pioneering industry for cheap political points I don't know what this means. When someone tells a blatant lie, it would be easy to quote them for a start. What 'monumental effort' was lied about? If it's about Boeing then I have to say I too think the company is doing a terrible job and if anyone is lying about the effort it's them, there have been numerous whistleblowers who came out and talked about the coverups at Boeing.
- n4r9 2y agoI didn't personally use the word "blatant", but when I said "lying" I was referring to claims that: * The Biden administration either forgot about or deliberately chose to leave astronauts in space for political reasons. * Trump's request accelerated the decision to bring the astronauts home. "Monumental efforts" was a more general comment about the space industry, including the activities of both NASA and SpaceX. Bringing astronauts home from space when equipment has gone faulty is a challenge I do not envy whatsoever. For Trump to claim credit in the venture is bordering on obscene.
- SLWW 2y ago[flagged]
- fzeroracer 2y agoYou're effectively tone policing an article for not being kind enough to the current administration that is lying their ass off about everything they do every step of the way.
- dapf 2y ago[dead]
- SLWW 2y agoI'm not tone policing, I'm saying he sounds condescending like the rest of these types of articles... making it sound like noise, adding to the static. I didn't say he was wrong in what he was saying, I'm just seeing this as an outsider who immediately gets a sour taste in my mouth. Tone policing is an ad hominem argument focusing on the tone and not the merit to DISCREDIT the information within, i am not intending to discredit him, i don't dispute his factual claims, just noting that he made it harder to see his side of things from my perspective.
- pveierland 2y agoBerger is not a "one note journalist". He literally wrote the book "Liftoff" which is great telling of the story of SpaceX, and has covered space topics in extensive detail for a long time. The article is important because the narrative told by the administration is clearly not true and in bad faith, and it is right to call it out.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y agoMy impression is that Berger is well meaning, but out of his element. By asking "Can space remain nonpartisan?", as if any government agency was even remotely non-partisan to begin with, or as if that was even a theoretical possibility, betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of how government functions.
- someperson 2y agoJust noting 'throne of lies' is a subheading and not in the body of the article. I don't know how Ars Technica does things, but in some news outlets a separate editor have control over titles and subheading rather than the author of the article.
- creesch 2y agoI mean, if you read the rest of the article the subheading fits. So, it doesn't really change the message.
- ta1243 2y agoMaybe, but he did write > And still, the lies came.
- pavon 2y agoIIRC Ars has stated that the story author is the ones that writes the headers/subheaders, but they write multiple and A/B testing picks the one to show.
- bheadmaster 2y agoI wasn't very convinced by his arguments - the main one being: Senior NASA officials earlier this month confirmed, publicly and on the record, that the decision was made by the space agency in the best interests of the International Space Station Program. Not for political reasons. To be a little snarky here - so Senior NASA officials: honest, Musk: liar? If, hypothetically, NASA was pressured for political reasons, I don't think Senior NASA officials would reveal it to the public anyway. So the fact that they said it's not for political reasons doesn't really prove anything for either side of the argument.
- hoseja 2y agoNASA, the pork factory, not impartial? Impossible!
- Denote6737 2y agoWhat about all the other things. For example the crew dragon was docked back in september waiting for return. The last administration could have called for return at any point before the inaguration to claim glory, but didn't because they aren't hacks.
- bheadmaster 2y agoWhat do you mean? The fact that they didn't return the astronauts implies the last administration's integrity?
- walls 2y agoYes, it shows they weren't manipulating NASA for political points.
- bheadmaster 2y agoThat does not make sense. Did they care more about "not manipulating NASA for political points" than about astronauts who were stuck in space for 9 months, with all the harmful effects that it entails?
- kypro 2y agoFirstly, I understand people will disagree with me on this and that's fine – if you disagree please just explain why. Based on what I've read on this, I can see why Trump and Elon MIGHT feel like the return flight was held back for political reasons... But I'm not really able to take either side of this argument as it stands, so I'll give my thoughts for why that is in the hope someone might be able to convince me one way or the other... Firstly, the assumption that NASA is apolitical should be questioned. This might just be my ignorance, but I still haven't seen any good reasoning for why NASA would delay the return flight. As others have noted the capsule was already there, but NASA seemingly just decided to randomly keep them up there months longer than necessary? Why? And while it's not fair to blame the Biden administration for this directly, ultimately the actions of any government agency would be the responsibility of the current administration to some extent, so if there was any suspicion that the return flight was being pushed back for political reasons the Biden administration should have intervened. I imagine if Elon did push for an earlier return and was denied this without a good reason he might have questioned why, and I could imagine someone in that position might assume a political motive – perhaps reasonably depending on those private conversations had. I also think there's an argument to be made that if the Biden administration was friendlier with Elon and didn't go out of their way to alienate him that this return flight would have happened earlier too. Perhaps because Elon could have spoke to Biden directly as he did with Trump, or because NASA would have changed their calculation on the PR of the return. I have tried repeatedly to find a reason why the return flight might have been delayed, but haven't been able to find any good reason for this so I'm on the fence about why this might have happened. If someone can give me a reasonable explanation for why they weren't returned earlier (especially if it's a reason Elon would have been aware of) I'd likely conclude Elon is most likely lying. Either way the argument, "Elon is wrong because the capsule was up there the whole time so they could have been brought back whenever, but NASA just decided to push it back" is not a convincing explanation that there was no political calculation here.
- echoangle 2y agoThe normal process is that you always have at least one US and one Russian Vehicle docked to the ISS. In emergencies, each crewmember uses their spacecraft to return to earth. The normal rotation is that an additional spacecraft arrives at the ISS (so there are now 3 vehicles docked in total) and then the older spacecraft leaves with its crew. So before the single dragon leaves, a new dragon would arrive. I think the general idea is to always have at least some Russians and Americans on the ISS at all times (although they are doing swapped missions now so even having only one vehicle left would ensure that most of the time) and to always have crew on the ISS, even if one vehicle needs to return early due to technical problems.
- weberer 2y ago>"We're going to stand by for splashdown located in the Gulf of America," she said. >Ah, yes. The Gulf of America. >This is why we can't have nice things. That doesn't sound like an "excellent journalist". It sounds like a Redditor.
- Gareth321 2y agoI cringed reading that. It's like something an edgy West coast teenage Redditor would write.
- pavlov 2y agoYeah, instead of evaluating a journalist by looking at over a decade of high-quality work he has done writing about this space, let’s pull up a joke from one article and judge that. Do you realize that you’re the one behaving like a low-quality Redditor here.
- seanw444 2y ago> That doesn't sound like an "excellent journalist". It sounds like a Redditor. We're not talking about their >decade of work. We're talking about this work, and this work sounds like a Redditor.
- rpmisms 2y agoYou're arguing from priors. I respect Berger's work, but it doesn't exempt him from acting like a pillock, clearly.
- 93po 2y agoBasically any online article site like ars comes across as a Redditor with reddit-tier takes and a mixture of ChatGPT. If you graduate to something like the NYT then you sound like a lobbyist.
- abecedarius 2y agoBerger wrote two books on SpaceX in a very positive light generally, portraying Musk as extraordinarily driven and capable though not passing over less admirable traits. Berger is not a hater.
- corey_moncure 2y agoArs has been like this ever since Conde Nast bought them. It was a great publication a long time ago.
- cft 2y agoPure ideological drivel. Anti technology.
- somenameforme 2y agoEric Berger used to be a major standout from them, and has traditionally never delved into the partisan nonsense. I've recommended him, on this account alone, countless times. He was a diamond surrounded by a pile of crap. It's extremely out of character and the writing on this exact topic is somewhat contradicted by other articles he himself wrote on it, like this [1] one. I have a suspicion he's being pressured to increase engagement/subscriptions, and it's trivial to do that in the age of such extreme political derangement. Countdown to Substack. [1] - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/butch-and-suni-send-mixed-messages-on-whether-politics-delayed-their-return/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/butch-and-suni-send-mi...
- kenjackson 2y agoIn the linked article he stated: “For what it is worth, all of the reporting done by Ars over the last nine months suggests the decision to return Wilmore and Williams this spring was driven by technical reasons and NASA's needs on board the International Space Station, rather than because of politics.”
- somenameforme 2y agoRead the article I linked above, also written by Eric Berger! Butch confirmed Elon's claim that he made an offer to bring them home last year was accurate. So we know that that offer was made, and must have been rejected. What we don't know is why. But the real thing here is that Eric Berger has written extensively about the political games NASA plays or (depending on one's perspective) is compelled to play. They support a lot of fundamentally flawed programs that are either a complete waste of money or will never go anywhere, like SLS/Artemis. The reason they do this is because, in NASA's case, their funding depends on it and, in the astronauts' case, because they'll never fly again if they don't play ball. So you don't simply take things NASA says at face value - again something he has written about ad nauseum. His understanding of the industry, and the games surrounding it, are part of what made (and hopefully in the future continues to make) him such an excellent reporter. But this latest article just dumps all of that and is written with all the insight and worldview of somebody on /r/politics.
- croes 2y agoWhen Trump said >They got left in space And Musk >They were left up there for political reasons There was the line already crossed, because those statements are untrue and they know. In other words they lied.
- Symmetry 2y agoI think the author probably made a mistake in using that subheading. For those familiar with the meme[1] it's saying that this isn't that important but read straight it says the opposite. I'm all for playful subheadings, I love when The Economist uses them, but they shouldn't radically alter the meaning when a big fraction of the audience won't get any particular subtle reference and I think that makes this a failure of writing. [1]https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-sit-on-a-throne-of-lies https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-sit-on-a-throne-of-lies
- bigtones 2y ago> He’s very knowledgeable about space topics, has good sources, and has been extremely fair to Musk in the past. None of the writers of Ars Technica are anything like fair to Musk.
- TaupeRanger 2y agoDo you think it's easy to be "fair" to someone who continually spouts misinformation, falsehoods, and retweets or reply-boosts such things on an almost daily basis?
- glenda 2y agoYou're right, they're probably not critical enough.
- pokstad 2y agoThey were all “fair” to him until he switched politics.
- FireBeyond 2y agoMusk's donations to political parties is public (leaving aside SuperPAC and other funding being hidden). He has NEVER donated more to the Democrats than the Republicans. Like most billionaires he donates to both parties. Historically, he donates ten times more to the Republicans and the Democrats. Nothing about Musk has ever seemed "liberal". Just convenient. He smokes weed on shows, but if you work for one of his companies you'll be fired if you don't piss clean. Anti-taxes. Anti-regulation/oversight. How has he ever been democrat-leaning in any meaningful way?
- kergonath 2y ago> None of the writers of Ars Technica are anything like fair to Musk. True. For some reason they keep minimising the damage he is doing to both science and democracy.
- acdha 2y agoWhat is your standard of fairness? This seems eminently fair: Musk lied for political reasons and people who care about that whole objective reality thing are criticizing him for it. He’s arguably the second-most powerful man in the world right now and craves attention like few others, so it seems quite unfair to say he shouldn’t be the subject of public criticism when he certainly doesn’t apply that standard to his own behaviour.